MTG Salvation

On a more casual route, vial smash the fierce may also be possibly enabling the burn deck-archetype to this format. With a furnace of rath/dictate of the twin gods effect out, something like resolving searing wind or sorin's vengeance are going to be doing 38 or 34 points of damage, off one spell.

Quote from Jivanmukta »

I dislike breaking cards down but here we go:

White: Flying (primary), Vigilance (primary or secondary), Lifelink (primary)
Blue: Flying (primary), Proliferate (primary)
Black: Flying (secondary), Lifelink (primary), Deathtouch (primary) Proliferate (secondary)
Green: Vigilance (primary or secondary), Deathtouch (primary), Proliferate (secondary)

I can't remember if white or green is primary in Vigilance but I think it's green. Technically we can call Vigilance tertiary in blue but nah.
If we want to call "cost effectiveness" green then we can add that, but I'd rather not go there.

Card seems pretty color balanced to me.

Vigilance - primarily white mechanic. Green has some but its limited to 8 rare / mythic cards ever printed. I will give this some leeway because green has been getting more vigilance of late but honestly until VERY VERY recently green had almost no vililance. In my mind, green is still a secondary color towards vigilance if even then. The history of getting vigilance in green has been extremely sparce in the past and most of the cards that have it have been recent editions.

Deathtouch - you could call this one on green. I more bought it as the black pickup because if you call this a green pickup then black is not doing much. While you could call this a green ability, deathtouch tends to be a heavier mechanic towards black.

Proliferate - you can call it the green splash but like I was saying, the way in which it was implimented closer resembled how blue proliferation worked previously.

I get that you can loosely tie these abilities to green, in my mind, none of these cards actually make the card green though. This card could just as easily have been an esper card and I would not have been asking myself why it did not pick up green as nothing about the card actually gives it an identity of green. The mechanics that lend themselves to green these days tend to be Trample, noncreature removal, tokens, land or creature tutor, +/+ counters. The proliferate is the closest in my mind to being green but again its a mechanic that was spread over multiple colors so its hard to really say that is green.

Quote from herenorthere »

Anyone have any idea how many Partner cards we are likely to see? Any chance of getting, say, 2 Izzet, or 2 Boros, etc.? I would assume its pretty unlikely but I think it would be cool if we did. At first I was super against the idea but now its kind of growing on me because its kind of like a "Build your own commander" mechanic.

Given that we have seen enemy and allied pair legends, I would say its a good chance we will see 10 Partner legends (one for each color combination). In the past they would do 2 new main legends that could be swapped either way and then we had a legend that fell within their colors but with less colors. This ended up usually being 3 new legends per deck. I assume based on what we have seen so far that we will see a single 4 color legend and 2 Partners for each deck. This means that each precon would have two commander options in piloting them from the stock deck which would be the single 4 color legend or the two partners together.

This is all an assumption on my end but given the information we have thus far, its probably fairly close to what we will see.

Christ, Saskia is cool. I love that direct damage.

Quote from Jivanmukta »

I think the card could have been WUB, UBG, WBG, or how it is currently. This card is an example of why I hate 4 colors. The flavor and mechanics get muddled to incomprehensibility.

I am in agreement. I really dislike 4 colored creatures as its close to impossible to give them a unique feeling identity that originates from what the colors do. I do like the Partner thing in part because it makes the identity of the legends still feel intact.

Random side note but ***** I love Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa. I dont even know why.... it doesn't even seem that strong but I cant stop drafting up potential lists even just going off of what it does on its own lol.

Quote from ISBPathfinder »

Random side note but ***** I love Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa. I dont even know why.... it doesn't even seem that strong but I cant stop drafting up potential lists even just going off of what it does on its own lol.

Put him in a Doran deck ;).

Provided that our read on Saskia is correct, I'm in love. The four color thing doesn't bother me at all, it just gives me more toys to pummel my opponentson with.

I'm 100% down for Saskia's army, she's amazing and fits my playstyle exceptionally well.

One of my first decks was heavily based around flanking. It was exactly as terrible as you would expect a deck full of 3-4 cmc 2/2 creatures to be. Zhalfirin Commander and Zhalfirin Crusader were far and away the best creatures in there. Because of that, I pretty much have to build a Sidar Konda deck. Sidar Jabari will likely find a place. I'm not yet sure if I want to partner in red for Telim'Tor and some of the Askari, but there's a good chance. I'm going to lose so many games and it's going to be great.

Also random side note, at first I thought Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa was just giving your creatures unblockable but it actually screws with your opponents ability to block so it means player B can attack player C using his evasion which I find amusing. Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa also would fit really well into a Doran, the Siege Tower deck.

EDIT:

Quote from OwnDemon »

Put him in a Doran deck ;).

>_< you beat me to it lol.

Quote from Airithne »

Provided that our read on Saskia is correct, I'm in love. The four color thing doesn't bother me at all, it just gives me more toys to pummel my opponentson with.

I'm 100% down for Saskia's army, she's amazing and fits my playstyle exceptionally well.

This. If I had the cards to support a fourth colour I'd totally convert my Queen Marchesa deck into a Saskia deck. Great mechanics, great art. I love going full-out aggro, and she lets you beat up on pillowforts by only having to deal with any one player's blockers. Plus she has full functionality the turn you play her, which is a big plus in my book.

Gosh, would the biggest miss ever on Saskia be that she should be a warrior? She's all the right colors. She looks the part.

I'm really interested to see the other enemy pair partners. The prospect of playing partner commanders but also sticking in 2 colors is very intriguing.

I keep coming back to Vial Smasher, sorry for the spam, but I'm thinking that this card may see some legacy play. If she resolves on turn-3, you can upkeep-fireblast an opponent for 10. Issue is her mana-cost competes with sulfuric vortex.

Saskia is great. She basically cleaves if you go wide to other players. Someone has a crazy pillowfort? Fine I choose you then hit the guy with no defenses. Then God help that person when you are the only one left and Saskia chose you... pain train incoming!

I have a question as Gideon Jura is a planeswalker can his ability be activated on your opponents turn as the ability does not change the loyalty?
Sorry if this is off topic a bit just needed a fast response from people who are judges.

Quote from MRdown2urth »

Gosh, would the biggest miss ever on Saskia be that she should be a warrior? She's all the right colors. She looks the part.

She still might be. It'seems the hardest part of her card to read, so it's a bit uncertain what the actual type is. If she's a warrior, it'll be corrected once we have the actual card.

Quote from natchshade »

I have a question as Gideon Jura is a planeswalker can his ability be activated on your opponents turn as the ability does not change the loyalty?
Sorry if this is off topic a bit just needed a fast response from people who are judges.

This is absolutely the wrong place for this: that would be in card rulings, and the answer wouldn't come more slowly than here. In answer to the question, you can only activate loyalty abilities of planeswalkers on your turn. The only thing in all of magic that lets you get around this is Teferi, Temporal Archmage's ultimate. Thus Gideon cannot block.

On topic, I'm interested in how the partner commanders can be mixed and matched. So far, I'm not seeing a lot of synergy between them, though. Which ones are worth matching?

Wow, just looked at the spoilers, is it just me or are most of those commanders either horribly dull or complete garbage?

Atraxa: eot proliferate and a bunch of keywords, woo hoo

Saskia: wow this is boring, pick a guy, do damage to him and to someone else, whoop-de-doo.

Partner: neat idea, but so far just seems like an excuse to pump out underpowered/boring on their own 2 color generals.

Bruse: yet another big dumb boring boros general, for crying out loud wotc give us something interesting! something to do with artifacts or enchantments that isnt just hitting people, dear god...

Kraum: RED. BLUE. ARTIFACT. GENERAL. MAKE ONE ALREADY!!!!! Kraum is boring and worse than all the other izzet generals that draw you cards.

Kydele: great, another U/G straightforward as hell combo general, [sarcasm]thanks wotc, just what i wanted, U/G to continue being the best and most boring dual color[/sarcasm]

Sidar: WHAT EVEN IS THIS? what a terrible ability, and G/W is such a boring color combo already. When it comes time to pick a theme, theres currently basically four: tokens, enchantress, hatebears, and saffi/reveillark combo.

Silas Renn: Basically Thada Adel for my graveyard with black in it, given my experience with that general, this is the most overpowered general spoiled by a country mile, but is at least somewhat interesting in the hands of a fun person, wizard gets a +1 from me, thanks.

Vial Smasher: again with the really boring abilities that already exist in better forms, there are a ton of R/B damage dealer generals out there, this one is just meh.

so far I'm left pretty uninspired by this list of garbage cards, hope the rest is better.

Quote from Mergatroid_Jones »

On topic, I'm interested in how the partner commanders can be mixed and matched. So far, I'm not seeing a lot of synergy between them, though. Which ones are worth matching?

Keeping in mind that we haven't seen 3/5 of them yet, Bruse Tarl, Circus Strongman pairs well with Silas Renn, Seeker Adept and Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa. Kraum, Ludevic's Opus is general enough to work with anyone else. The body and keywords are aggressive enough to support a beatdown strategy, but you really can't go wrong with card advantage anywhere. Vial Smasher the Fierce is at her best when you can cast expensive spells, which suggests ramp, and when you're going to be winning through regular damage, which suggests beats. Could work well with Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix if you're drawing cards without casting spells. Kydele is pretty goodstuff-y and works well enough with anyone who can benefit from access to UG. Kondo and Silas work well enough together to guarantee artifact recursion and could be built as Esper artifacts splashing green for Kondo.

The whole build your own commander element of partner is definitely interesting. I'm looking forward to playing around with these once we see the remaining options. Partner has done a lot of work getting me interested in a set I didn't think I was going to care about.

Here is how I arrived at it making sense for Atraxa to have green: Green loves +1/+1 counters, as does Simic and Abzhan (WBG). Black and green have poison counters and infect, while black has a lot of -1/-1 counters. This is all tied up together in a neat bow with blue contributing the "counters matter" theme with the Proliferate mechanic.

I personally like Atraxa (and love the art), and spent some time brainstorming some ways to differentiate her from another Vorel, Ghave, or +1/+1 counters matter deck. Inspiration came to me while searching Gatherer for black cards and the word "counter": maybe a deck focused on other types of counters (poison, -1/-1, verse, energy, experience, etc.).

Im still hesitant about the Partner legends, but I know that I am not the best innovator, so I am reserving judgment. I purposely read the new card discussion threads because often I think a card is crap but after seeing other peoples' ideas, I realize I was wrong and the creative juices start flowing.

Quote from MRdown2urth »

Christ, Saskia is cool. I love that direct damage.

Made for collateral damage, and if you hate a player enough, you can choose that player AND attack him for double damage too!

Quote from Macabre »

On a more casual route, vial smash the fierce may also be possibly enabling the burn deck-archetype to this format. With a furnace of rath/dictate of the twin gods effect out, something like resolving searing wind or sorin's vengeance are going to be doing 38 or 34 points of damage, off one spell.

I'm wet.

I so hope this is the case. Bonfire of the Damned? And with all of the other incremental damage effects like Guttersnipe, Thermo-Alchemist, et al, running around it seems plausible. Havoc Festival is also in these colors.

Quote from herenorthere »

Quote from Macabre »

On a more casual route, vial smash the fierce may also be possibly enabling the burn deck-archetype to this format. With a furnace of rath/dictate of the twin gods effect out, something like resolving searing wind or sorin's vengeance are going to be doing 38 or 34 points of damage, off one spell.

I'm wet.

I so hope this is the case. Bonfire of the Damned? And with all of the other incremental damage effects like Guttersnipe, Thermo-Alchemist, et al, running around it seems plausible. Havoc Festival is also in these colors.

Bonefire is fantastic. Even though you're paying XR, Vial smasher still shoots them X+X+1, in addition to the actual effect. Any discounted spells are fantastic, really. Delve, (TREASURE CRUISE) Emerge, evoke. He can cast ancestral recall and dome someone for 8 as a free bonus.

If you're into the whole burn thing, abundant maw seems pretty wonderful.